Those Meddling Kids
by Technomad
Summary: After the Red invasion, the Scooby gang find themselves in the Army...and are assigned as a deep-penetration recon team. One day, they get orders to link up with some of the most feared guerrillas in occupied territory: the Wolverines! Based on the 1984 movie and the original Scooby Doo continuity. No Scrappy, no Scooby Dum, no North Koreans.
1. Chapter 1

Those Meddling Kids

A Scooby-Doo/Red Dawn crossover

by Technomad

Chapter 1.

Freddy

Southern Colorado, Spring, 1985

"We'll pull in here and wait out the day," Fred Jones said, as he guided their vehicle into an abandoned gas station's garage. The others said nothing; they were very tired. Dawn was breaking in the east, and the tops of the hills were already turning red with the returning sunlight.

He looked at his companions. They were all changed greatly from the carefree investigating team they had once been. Before the war, they had traveled around on a stipend from a skeptics' group, solving mysteries and uncovering phony ghosts, hauntings and apparitions. Like everybody else in the United States, for them there was "before the war" and the present, which was like a nightmare they couldn't wake out of.

He remembered the day of the invasion vividly. All too well, in fact. He sometimes dreaded sleep, since when he slept, he often relived that day. They had been driving down a highway in eastern Colorado, on their way to a town where they had heard about a haunted mansion. It had been a routine trip, with Shaggy, Scooby, Velma and Daphne napping so that they'd be wide awake and alert after dark, until the first parachutists came out of the sky. Then things got confused, with bullets cracking through the air around the Mystery Machine, and all too often, thunking into the sides and back of the van.

Freddy couldn't quite figure out how he had managed to escape. He had pulled a u-turn that he'd never have tried under other circumstances, and swerved all over the road as he sped out of there, with Velma and Daphne screaming in terror and Shaggy and Scooby cowering in the back of the Mystery Machine. Luckily, Fred had long since taken the precaution of souping the Mystery Machine up, so that, while it was no hot rod, it could go a lot faster than the original designers had intended it to. Between that and luck he still couldn't quite believe, he had managed to outrun the invaders, and had come barrelling into an American-held town "like a bat out of Hell," as the awe-struck onlookers had told him when he'd finally managed to brake the van and stagger out.

Before he and his friends quite knew what had happened, they were in a large crowd of other people their own age, male and female alike, all holding up their hands and swearing the oath that made them members of the United States Army. He had never thought he would join up, and neither had his friends. Except for Shaggy.

Much to Freddy's surprise, Shaggy had turned out to be a veteran, and a combat veteran, to boot! He had been a friend of the other three in high school, but when Fred, Velma and Daphne had gone off to college, Shaggy had dropped out of sight. When he returned, right as they graduated, he was the lovable, cowardly, gluttonous guy they'd come to know again, and love. And he had Scooby-Doo with him. He and the dog shared a rare rapport. Fred had been rather curious about where Shaggy had been, but had accepted his explanation that while the others had been in college, he'd been "bumming around, doing this and that." The scars he'd seen on his friend's body were evidence that something more had been going on than "bumming around," but Fred held his peace. If Shaggy wanted to talk about it, he knew where Fred was, and they often had time and privacy.

It turned out that Shaggy had been in the Army, and had trained as a dog handler. He'd been in a lot of nasty, covert little actions, most of them in Central and South America, that he still couldn't talk about. The aftermath of the last one, which had left him with an honorable discharge, a Silver Star, and his scars, was why he ate so much. "Like, I was left behind in the jungle after we tangled with some FARC, and it took me a week to walk to friendly territory. I've never been so hungry in all my life, and when I found friendlies, I ate a whole box of rations at once. Ever since then, I've been hungry all the time." Fred's eyes had gone wide, and both Daphne and Velma had patted Shaggy, tears running down their cheeks.

The poor Mystery Machine was a write-off; it had bullet holes all through it, and that last frantic run had burned the engine out completely, since the cooling system had failed. Things were chaotic, but the four friends had been able to stay together, and to keep Scoob with them. After some very _basic_ basic training, mostly consisting of weapons familiarization, they found that their reputations had preceded them.

They were now members of a deep-penetration recon team. In some ways, things hadn't changed. They still went to places they weren't really expected, and still investigated reports of out-of-place activities. However, they weren't investigating phony hauntings any more. These days, it was the invaders they were investigating. And instead of the old Mystery Machine, they were in a four-wheel-drive on-off-road vehicle. Their car, which they had dubbed "The Misery Machine," had apparently been a rich man's toy before being commandeered by the Army, to judge by the paint job that one could still see through gaps in the hastily-applied camouflage paint.

The garage they were in hadn't been used, from the look of it, since before the invasion. It was fairly clean-smelling. Shaggy, his CAR-15 at the ready, checked the whole place out, with Daphne covering him with her sniper rifle and Scooby lending assistance. While the place seemed to be empty, there had been times when they had been surprised. Quite a few people had run from the invaders, and if they couldn't make it to friendly territory, they often devolved into feral scavengers, dangerous if encountered unexpectedly.

When the garage proved to be empty, they set up to wait out the daylight. Moving by daylight, this deep in enemy-held territory, was dangerous. Velma, their radio operator and explosives expert, pulled out her radio and turned it on. First, it scanned known enemy frequencies, but nothing came out save static. Then, she turned on the transmitter. It was equipped with a "frequency jumper," synced to the receiver at the base they had started out from. This was to keep any enemies out there from accidentally tuning in and listening to things they weren't meant to.

"Meddlers to Candystore, Meddlers to Candystore. Come in, please, Candystore. Over."

After a minute, an answer came back. "Meddlers, this is Candystore. You're coming in five-by-five. Over."

"Authentication, Candystore." snapped Velma. "King to King's Pawn Two, over."

"Authentication, Meddlers. Queen to Queen's Bishop three, over." Velma nodded. That was the correct response, and she knew she had got the right station. Freddy relaxed slightly. Even though he knew the radio was a necessity, there was always the nagging fear that the enemy had somehow or other got the frequency jumper figured out, and instituted countermeasures.

"Meddlers to Candystore, we are at square D-5 of Chart 17, and are planning to spend the day. Please tell our hosts to be ready to receive us, over."

"Will do. Candystore, out."

"Meddlers, out." Velma shut down the radio, and stretched. " That room up there looks fairly comfortable. We can bed down there. Freddy, I know you're tired, so why don't you and Shag take a nap? Daphne and I can stay on guard, and if we need you we'll rouse you."

"Sounds good." While they had very little privacy from one another, there was little-to-no romantic activity between them. In the field, they were too busy and usually too tired, and behind the lines, there was no private space available for such things. Daphne broke out her weapon, a modified M-14 sniper rifle, and took up a position where she could see outside, while Velma took a post at a hole in the wll where she could see the other side of the garage. Freddy and Shaggy climbed up into the loft and were soon asleep. Scooby curled up next to Shaggy, as always.

Jed

Jed Eckert shut off the radio. "We just got word from our side. That recon unit we've been told to expect is not far away. About ten miles. We can make it there tonight. Let's pack up and get ready to go, people." As he'd expected, this met with a chorus of groans from the others. "Look, we've had a nice rest this winter. The Reds have probably figured we're either dead, or not in the area any more. It's time we got back into the war."

The group had formed more-or-less spontaneously in the wake of the invasion. Jed, his brother Matt, and several of their school classmates had fled ahead of the invaders when their hometown of Calumet was overrun by Soviet paratroops, hiding in the mountains. At first, all they'd wanted was to stay out of sight, but after an encounter with some stray Russians had turned into a firefight, leading to the executions of many of their neighbors, they had decided to fight back. They had taken in a few others, including Toni and Erica Mason, the granddaughters of a rancher they had visited, and Colonel Andrew Tanner, a downed USAF fighter pilot. They were known as the "Wolverines," after the Calumet High School mascot.

At first, their attacks had been surprisingly easy. They knew the country, the enemy did not, and most of the troops holding Calumet were not elite front-line soldiers, but what Colonel Tanner called "REMFs." But things had got steadily tougher, until after winter came, they had considered breaking out and getting to American lines. They had nearly done it, but their discovery of an abandoned ranch that had been owned by a piously LDS family had changed that plan. The family's year's supply of food was still there, and quite edible, for the most part. With that to draw on, the Wolverines had gone into what they called "hibernation," and Colonel Tanner had left to get through the lines on his own. They had never expected to hear from him again.

They had been hugely surprised when American Green Berets came down from the sky, bearing gifts. They had parachuted in very near their hideout, along with nearly a hundred pounds of plastic explosive and detonators and a radio and instructions in their use.

"We can't stay with you long, and from what we've heard, you're doing just fine on your own," they had said. "We've got other things we need to be doing, but we wanted to top you up on supplies. You can use this radio to get in touch with our side and let them know what's going on, and if you need anything else." Jed had thanked them, while privately wishing that they could either stay, or had brought more food with them. The ranchers' food was good, but was running a bit low.

The Wolverines set off into the gathering dusk. They walked single-file along an obscure deer track. There was just enough moonlight for them to see their way, and they knew the way. They had used it many times, almost always under cover of darkness. Jed sometimes reflected that their name, "The Wolverines," wasn't really applicable any more. Wolverines, from what he knew of them, were mainly diurnal animals, and he and his comrades had become creatures of the night, more at home in the dark than not. Darkness was now their friend.

For miles, they walked, sometimes following a deserted ranch road, at other times striking off across country. They had been given night-vision goggles by their benefactors, but they did not use them often; the batteries had limited lives, and they could not count on recharging. By this time, they were accustomed enough to the dark to not need artificial help, at least on a moonlit night.

The Communists did not usually move about by night. When they did, they did so in vehicles. Those made more than enough noise, and were road-bound enough, for the Wolverines to have no trouble hiding themselves and letting their enemies go by. Every time the Communists made an uneventful trip, they relaxed just that little bit more, thinking that the Wolverines were far away or dead. Jed intended that they continue to think that, until the time to strike at them came. The more the enemy were off their guard, the easier it would be. Unlike a conventional commander, he did not have lives to spare, and he treasured everybody who had entrusted their fates to his wisdom. He hadn't been close to all of them before the war. He hadn't even known Toni or Erica then. But now they were his family.

The night was calm around them. Occasionally, Jed would hear a night-flying bird flittering around, and once or twice he thought he saw deer. Since the invasion, there had been a lot less hunting; the remaining ranchers and farmers were closely watched and had no firearms, and town dwellers were kept strictly within town limits. That meant that the Wolverines could supplement their diet, when they chose to. They often did hunt, but did not use firearms for that any more. Firearms were too noisy and the Communists were often listening for strange shots in the hills. They had figured out ways to trap deer, and had other noiseless ways to take down game.

Several times, they passed deserted ranches. It made Jed sad to see them, with their houses burnt out or beginning to collapse, their meadows increasingly overgrown, their machinery rusting. While the Communists had not begun to formally collectivize farming, Jed knew that would come if they stayed on and managed to keep control. They were too heavily invested in that system to ever consider alternatives, even when those alternatives were all that kept the Red homelands themselves from starving.

Around two AM, the Wolverines came to where they had been told to expect the recon team. It was an abandoned gas station, sitting forlornly beside a deserted side-road. At Jed's gesture, the Wolverines all took cover, and Jed gave the whistle that he'd been told to give, to signal the recon team that they had arrived and were friendly.

Freddy

Freddy was awakened from a doze by a stick poking his shoulder. "Fred!" Instinctively, he rolled to his feet, reaching for his pistol, before he saw who it was. "It's me, Velma! We heard the signal whistle just now!" Fred padded over to a window, staying out of sight. He gave the counter-whistle, signalling that they were there and all was well. Then he turned to Velma. "Velma, get the others up. We're about to have company."

A few minutes later, Daphne opened the door, while Shaggy covered her with his CAR-15. A group of people materialized from the bushes, looking around cautiously and keeping their weapons ready as they trooped on in.

Fred inspected the newcomers closely as they came in. They were about the same age as he and his friends, and looked to be tough as nails. "You're the Wolverines? Pleased to meet you. I'm Fred Jones, this is Velma Dinkley, Shaggy Rogers, Daphne Blake, and our dog is called Scooby-Doo." Fred's group all nodded, greeting their new allies. Both groups looked each other over.

Jed

Jed gave the recon team a once-over, and approved of what he saw. They looked tough, mean and piratical, with uniforms that showed signs of having seen hard use, and the same wary look in their eyes that he knew he and his own group showed. "I'm Jed Eckert. This is my brother, Matt. The rest of us are Arturo Mondragon…"

"Everybody calls me Aardvark." Jed nodded in acknowledgement, and went on:

"Daryl and Danny Bates, Toni and Erica Mason, and Robert Morris. This area's our home. We come from Calumet. That's about twenty miles off to the northeast."

"Pleased to meet you all," Fred seemed to be the recon team's spokesman. "You know where it is we're to go?"

"Yeah. We can take you there. It's too far to go by night, though. We'll hole up here till tomorrow evening. We never like to show ourselves by daylight."

Fred nodded. "Good idea, that. We like moving by night ourselves. We used to do our work by night, back before the war."

"What did you do?" asked Matt.

"We were working for a skeptics' group, and we traveled around, investigating haunted houses and things like that," Fred explained. "We found an awful lot of phonies, but no real ghosts."

"Hey, I've heard of you!" piped up Daryl. "You were the people who unmasked the El Raton Phantom! I was in town when that happened, but I don't think I saw you!"

"Yeah, that was us," Fred confirmed. "Some idiot thought he could scare people away from his meth lab by pretending to be a ghost of a Spanish rancher."

"What an idiot!" Matt scoffed. "Ghosts attract attention, if anything! Did he really think people were so scared of ghosts that they'd get out of there and leave him and his meth lab alone? I'm surprised he didn't have half the damn fools in New Mexico trampling up there to get a look at a real live ghost!"

"Like, you'd be surprised to find out how many people think posing as a ghost will scare people away," Shaggy spoke up. "Sometimes it's so they can buy a place up cheap because 'nobody'll want it because it's, like, _haunted'_ and other times it's to keep folks from finding out whatever evil deeds they're up to."

Everybody snorted at such idiocy. Robert paused from his usual obsessive cleaning of his rifle to say: "Me, I'd set up a haunting at the other end of town if I wanted to keep people away from something I was up to."

Toni put in: "I wonder if the Reds would be scared by fake ghosts?"

"They've certainly made enough of them. And quite a few of those ghosts would be good and mad at the people who killed them, wouldn't they?" mused Daphne.

"We may need to keep that idea in mind," Jed said, hoping to drag the conversation back on track. "You were told to meet us here, and we were told to meet you here. What's up?"

Fred went over to the "Misery Machine" and pulled out a map. "We're not too far from Pueblo here. We need to get in there and find out what happened to the Pershing missiles there."

That brought general silence. Finally, Velma spoke up. "Pershing… _missiles_?" 

"Yeah. They were stored there when the invasion happened, and we aren't sure if the people in charge of them managed to disable them in time. Even if they did, there might be enough parts around for the Reds to put some of them together. With those things, they could hit far behind U.S. lines."

"Do they have nuclear warheads?" At that question, everybody turned pale.

"No," Fred hastened to reassure his friends. "Those were kept at other places. The ones that were in areas taken by the Reds were definitely disarmed." He was greeted by skeptical looks. "Hey, otherwise wouldn't they have used them on us by now?"

"Well, yeah…" Nobody had a counter-argument for that.

Fred said: "Look, we don't have enough night left to make it to Pueblo, at least if this map I have is accurate. How's about we hole up for the day and head out tonight?"

Jed shook his head. "We have ways of getting around by day. All the ranchers around here hate the Reds. Even so, the Reds do have to let them move things around in their trucks, or nobody in their zone's going to eat. We can all sneak in close with some of them."

END Chapter One

(Author's note: I pulled this and fixed a few minor errors, mostly because I finally found a website that could give me all the Wolverines' real full names. wasn't any help, but Wikiquote was.)


	2. Chapter 2

Those Meddling Kids

Chapter Two

by Technomad

The day wore on, the southern Colorado sun beating down outside. In the abandoned gas station, the Wolverines and the recon team took turns sleeping and staying on watch, always alert for any sign that the enemy was aware of their presence. They saw a few Red aircraft…airplanes and one bulky, menacing-looking helicopter…but none of them showed any sign of interest in a deserted gas station. Since the snow was off the ground, there weren't trails of footprints to betray them to watchful eyes.

At one point, Jed and Fred were up at the same time. They sat at opposite sides of a rickety table, tucking into some of the food that Fred and his group had brought along. After a few minutes of silent eating, Jed finally broke the silence. "Hey, Fred…what's up with the dog?"

Fred looked up from his ration can. "Oh, you mean Scooby?"

"Yeah." Jed looked at Fred curiously. "I mean…no offense meant, I'm sure…but why bring a dog along on this kind of thing?"

Fred finished the last of his canned ration and leaned back in his chair. "Well…before we all met back up, Shaggy, over there, was in the Army. This was some years before the war. We'd gone off to college, and he'd joined the Army. He trained as a dog handler, and was apparently in on some fairly hairy ops up against our Red friends, south of the border. A lot of it's stuff he still can't talk about."

"Oh-kay…" Jed put down his spoon, the ration can having been very thoroughly and efficiently emptied. "But in that case, why are you the guy in charge here? He's a veteran, isn't he? Why isn't he in charge?" He pointed to the sergeant's stripes on Fred's shoulder. "Why isn't _he_ wearing those, if he had previous experience?"

"Shaggy? He wouldn't take the job. You remember, he was on some hairy ops?" Fred leaned forward, his gaze intense. "Something _bad_ happened to him down there. Something _really bad."_

Jed's parents had not raised foolish sons. His eyes widened, and he shut his mouth with a snap. Fred nodded grimly. "If he wants to talk about it, you listen, but until he decides he wants to talk, you don't bother him, understand?" Jed nodded, and made a mental note to pass the word along to the other Wolverines. Daryl and Danny, in particular, were a bit impulsive and prone to act before they thought things through. He knew that he could warn them off that subject, though.

"But, to get this back on track, why have the dog along? What does he do?" Jed was honestly curious. He had had pets before the invasion, and missed them fiercely. If he could have been sure that a dog or cat would be able to adapt to the rugged life that he and his friends lived, he'd have had one. He envied the recon team the Great Dane's companionship, but wasn't sure about the wisdom of bringing the dog along.

"For starters, Jed, that isn't _just_ a dog, not by any means. Remember, how Shaggy was a dog handler? Well, when Shag was in, the military was experimenting with specially-created animals…they called it 'Project Uplift.' Dolphins, for example. The Navy was working with them, trying to make them able to communicate clearly with humans. The Army was more interested in dogs, although I believe they did do some experiments on some of the smaller, more common breeds of bears." Fred pointed toward Scooby, who was sleeping curled up with Shaggy. "Scooby there was one of the Army's near-misses."

"Scooby?"

"Shag was one of the people working on that project. Scooby was originally 'Special Canine Unit Bravo Yankee Two.' He was one of their last prototypes before the project got shut down. They were very close to success, but some Congressman got a lot of flak from animal-rights types and raised such a stink that they had to close the whole thing down. We're not sure what happened to the others, but Shaggy was able to keep Scooby somehow. He had his discharge about that time, and maybe some of the paperwork got lost or fudged somehow." Fred looked very, very pious for a second. "I am shocked… _shocked!_ that such a thing could ever happen in our beloved U.S. Army!" Jed and Fred shared a low laugh.

"So how is Scooby different?"

"For starters, he's nearly as smart as a human, and he can kinda-sorta talk. If he'd been through all the surgery on his vocal cords and mouth that the Army had planned, he'd be able to talk almost as well as a human. Shaggy said he saw a couple of dogs who'd had that done, and it was eerie to hear them talking. As things stand, he talks well enough that we understand him…most of the time. Shaggy does the best of us at that. He's got a real gift." Fred shook his head ruefully. "He and Scoob have a bond that's as tight as anything I've ever seen."

"I see. What else about him did they change, and what's the same, still?"

"He's a Great Dane, as you can see, but he's got a sense of smell that's as good as any bloodhound. More than once, he's saved all our asses by smelling bad guys before we even knew they were there. He can also hear them, and will warn us if he hears anything out of the ordinary."

Jed's eyes went very wide. "How about fighting? Has he ever had to get into a real fight?"

"Not often. We try to avoid fighting. Our job is mainly reconnaissance." Fred replied, opening a bottle of mineral water and taking a swig before passing it to Jed, who took it gratefully, happy for the chance to wash the taste of the canned rations out of his mouth. "But when he does, watch out! He's got extra-hardened teeth and enhanced jaw muscles…the genes for them came from a pit bull…and he can literally bite a man's arm off!"

"That's the truth," said the redheaded girl, Daphne, who had awakened and come into the room. "I remember when some ALA caught us off-guard, and thought they had us dead-to-rights. They had me and Velma on the ground, getting ready for a bit of the old Soviet-style romance, when Scooby came roaring to the rescue. He clamped down on one guy's arm and bit through the forearm! Then he jumped on top of another guy who was on top of Velma and tearing her shirt off, opened his jaws REAL wide, and chomped down on the guy's head!" Daphne closed her eyes for a minute as the memories washed over her. "I'll never forget how that raping piece of shit screamed when Scooby literally crushed his head in his jaws!" She smiled a grim smile. "By the time the boys got there, Scooby had the situation well in hand, and all we needed was some TLC."

"I'll bet you did," Jed agreed. He remembered what had apparently happened to Toni and Erica. He couldn't understand why the Red commanders allowed their men to behave that way. _Didn't they realize that that sort of thing bred resistance faster than almost anything else they did?_ A lot of people in the US might have been willing to submit quietly, if the invaders had behaved decently toward them. Allowing their soldiers to mistreat the local population, on the other hand, ensured that almost nobody was willing to work with or for the Reds. Then, something that Daphne had said registered in his mind. "What do you mean, 'ALA?'"

Fred and Daphne's eyes went wide. "You _have_ been isolated, haven't you?" Jed nodded. "The ALA… 'American Liberation Army'…is a corps of turncoats that the Reds have been recruiting since about the New Year, to fill out their ranks. Kind of like the 'Hiwis' the Germans recruited in the Soviet Union." Daphne's smile was bitter. "Not that reminding them of that comparison goes over well, at all!"

Jed chuckled. What enemy propaganda he had seen harped endlessly on how the Americans were "Fascists," and how the benevolent Reds had come as liberators, not conquerors or occupiers. Hearing themselves compared with the "Fascists" they excoriated had to drive them wild with rage. "What sort of recruits can they get?"

Fred and Daphne both looked grim. "Some of them are forced into the ranks, usually by threats to their families. They're pretty reluctant, and desert or go over to our side at the first chance, so they're generally kept in support roles well behind the lines. They take over a lot of the scut-work for the Reds, and free up more of their men to fight against us." Fred grinned humorlessly. "And, of course, they're often quite willing to pass information along to any town-based resistance they can contact!"

Jed nodded. Then a thought struck him. "You said ' _some_ of them.' What about the others?"

Fred and Daphne both scowled reminiscently. "In any country you find scum. Believe it or not, there were some people before the war that really thought that the Reds were in the right. Others are just psychopaths who love a chance to hurt people, break things and live out their fantasies. In some places, where the Reds took prisons before the prisoners could be evacced, the prisoners were given the choice of joining the ALA or being shot as 'counter-revolutionary elements.' Quite a few of them jumped at the chance." Daphne's voice was bitter. "They're often turned loose on 'disloyal' areas, to teach the people there a lesson on why not to resist the occupation."

Jed's expression could have been called a smile, but not by anybody sane. "I hope we meet some of those people. I really hope that we meet them one day," he purred. "I think we'd all like to have a deep, meaningful discussion with them."

"Or play a game with them," said Robert, who'd come in in time to hear the last part of the conversation. His eyes gleamed with anticipation. "The game would be 'How Loud Can You Scream And How Long Can We Make You Last?'" Taking a can of rations from the pile, he sat down to eat it.

Fred and Daphne exchanged glances. Fred leaned close to Jed, pitching his voice low. "Is he all right?" asked Fred, nodding toward Robert.

Jed nodded. "Robert's all right. He lost some people he really cared about early on in the war, and since then, he's kept himself going by pure hate." Jed grimaced. "I just hope he can settle down if we last through into peacetime. I've heard that some like him…can't." Fred and Daphne nodded, understanding what Jed was saying. "At least we've more-or-less broken him of scalping the enemy. He did that for a while." At that, Fred and Daphne's eyes went very wide.

"How'd you get him to stop?" asked Daphne.

Jed grinned. "Every time we caught him with scalps, we made him throw them away, then kicked his ass good. After about the tenth time, he got the message." He shrugged eloquently. "To be honest, he sometimes gives me cold chills, but I'm really glad we've got him on our side."

After the sun went down, the Wolverines and the recon team left, heading for a nearby ranch. "We know the Schmidts…they're the people who live there," Jed explained. "They can help us get into Pueblo." Fred quietly hoped that the Wolverine leader knew what the hell he was talking about. Ever since the invasion, life had been one nasty surprise after another. In single file, not speaking or showing lights, they walked along a little-used deer trail, keeping out of sight of the roads.

At one point, Jed signaled for everybody to take cover. They hunkered down behind bushes or trees as a convoy of trucks went by below. The trucks were running under blackout rules, with only the lead truck showing headlights, and the others following in its wake by the light of lights under their undercarriages, but to the night-adapted eyes of the Wolverines and Fred's friends, they were quite well visible.

Robert made as if to raise his rifle to his shoulder, until Jed put his hand on Robert's shoulder and pulled him back. "What the hell do you think you're doing?" Jed snarled, very softly. He knew that a whisper's hiss would carry farther, and he wanted to take no chances on the Reds overhearing them, even by a millions-to-one chance.

"Jed! Don't you see? This is a perfect opportunity to ambush them!" Jed squeezed Robert's shoulder harder and pulled him farther back, until they were sitting together.

"Look, Robert. I know how you feel. I don't blame you a damn bit. But This. Is. Not. The. Time!" Robert slowly lowered his rifle, looking at Jed. Jed hoped he was getting through to his old friend. When the battle-hunger was on him, Robert did not always strike him as quite sane. "Right now, we've got a job to do. Roaring rampages of random revenge are fun, but they get in the way. Don't worry. From what I can tell about our new friends, they'll see to it that you get plenty of Reds to kill." Robert relaxed slightly and lowered his rifle, and Jed silently breathed a sigh of relief. There were times that dealing with the other Wolverines was more stressful than fighting the Reds.

Once the convoy was past, they continued on their way. As dawn was breaking in the East, they came up on a lonely ranch house. Jed narrowed his eyes and gave the signal whistle to tell the ranchers that the Wolverines were there. Sure enough, the signal that "all is well" was showing, so he signaled the others forward. A side door in the ranch house opened, and they were beckoned inside.

It was strange, for Jed, being in a real house after so long. Almost continuously since the invasion, he and his friends had slept outdoors, or in barns, abandoned buildings, or other such places. The house at the ranch where the Wolverines had holed up had been stripped, and wasn't in good shape, save for the cellar, which had been overlooked and was where the food supplies mandated by the LDS church's teachings were. He thought that he and the others looked incongrous, bristling with weapons and wearing their rough, dirty uniforms, standing in a neatly-kept living room.

However, Mr. and Mrs. Schmidt took the whole thing in stride. Mrs. Schmidt bustled around, insisting that everybody sit down and make themselves comfortable. "Oh, I wish I could offer you some refreshments, but ever since this awful invasion, food's been short!" Jed and the others hastened to assure their hostess that it was no problem, and introduced the recon team. "We're fairly well-found for food, ma'am, and we don't want to be a burden to you. We've got work to do down in Pueblo, and we were hoping you could get us in there without the bad guys figuring out what's going on."

Mr. Schmidt thought about it, his chin in his hand. "Shouldn't be difficult. We've been notified that the 'liberators'"…he loaded the word with bitter scorn… "are requesitioning livestock from local ranchers here. The way they phrased it, if we don't give them livestock voluntarily, they'll send their 'Liberation Forces' to take what they want."

"That would be the 'American Liberation Army,' I take it?" asked Jed. "We only just learned about them from the recon team here."

"Yeah, them," Mr. Schmidt scowled. "They're mostly the scum of the earth. There are a few who joined because they really believe all the…crap…the Reds preach, but most of them were taken straight out of prisons. They're out for revenge on the rest of us."

"We've had some run-ins with them," spoke up Daphne. She and Velma both looked very grim. "Scooby-Doo, here, taught them better than to meddle with us." Both young women smiled grimly. Scooby himself looked up from where he had buried his muzzle in a dog dish full of food to nod smugly.

"How well are they trained?" asked Jed. The rest of the Wolverines all leaned forward attentively, and the recon team also perked up and listened.

"Not really well, for the most part. There are those with pre-war, pre-prison military experience, and those are usually the sergeants and corporals. The rank-and-file are sloppy, and do as little as they can get away with."

Jed thought for a second. "You know, I may just have a way for us to get into town. How many of the ranchers around here are being forced to contribute to the enemy?"

Both Schmidts scowled. "Everybody around here's being levied for livestock. The Red scum hate the fact that they haven't been able to collectivize us. Until they 'consolidate' things, they have to be content with taking as much as they can while leaving us just enough to live on."

"Then maybe we can all infiltrate. We can pose as ranch hands, and help out when the ranchers bring in their assigned quotas of livestock."

Mr. Schmidt nodded. "That would work. Most of the ranchers here are desperately short of hands. Many of them slipped off to try to get through the lines and join the Army. Others ran into trouble with the Reds and were either shot or sent to camps. You see old codgers and ten-year-old boys around here trying to do a man's work, because their older brothers who should be doing it aren't around."

"Talk to your neighbors, and we can set this thing up. Hopefully, we can get this in motion in a couple of days. In the meantime, can we bunk in one of your outbuildings?" Jed held up his hand to forestall the Schmidts' offers of bedrooms, which he knew was coming. "We're used to sleeping rough, and we don't mind it any more. We also don't want to get you into trouble if we can help it. If we're out in one of the remoter outbuildings, you could plausibly say that you had no idea we were even there."

As they were bunking down, Fred asked Jed: "How do you know for sure you can trust these people so completely?"

Jed grinned. "In the first place, Mr. and Mrs. Schmidt are my, and my brother's, godparents. We've known them literally all our lives. They're loyal. In the second place…" Jed looked very grim for a second… "their son and daughter were both shot by the Reds when their paratroopers hit Calumet, the day of the invasion."

Fred nodded, accepting that explanation. Ever since the Reds had come, they had worked overtime at making new enemies for themselves.

 _Author's note: Some of this is taken from what I can find out about the "Red Dawn Plus Twenty" wiki; I've never been able to find the original material it was based on. Other things, like Robert taking scalps, is from the original script that became_ Red Dawn, Ten Soldiers ( _pre-Milius_ ). _I've read the original script, and in some ways, it holds together better than the movie did._

 _I also wanted to have Scooby be a lot like he is in the original cartoon, but with a real-world-plausible reason for why he's so much smarter than the average dog, and can kinda-sorta talk. I don't know that the military is working on "uplifting" animals to make them more useful, but it wouldn't surprise me one bit._


	3. Chapter 3

Those Meddling Kids

Chapter Three

by Technomad

 _Pueblo, Colorado, Occupied Territory_

General Vlad Bratchenko was in a very good mood. He'd been transferred to Pueblo just a couple of weeks ago. He had a good feeling about this new assignment. He now had twice the personnel under his command that he'd had before, and a more responsible job.

His time in Calumet had been dreadfully frustrating. He'd been in overall command of a mish-mash of rear-echelon troops, mostly Latin American allies, and had been plagued by an American partisan band calling itself "The Wolverines." The men he'd been forced to work with were all but helpless against the enemy partisans, who knew the country intimately and were much better shots than most of his own command. Again and again, they had struck, and had melted back into the forboding mountains and forests before he could coordinate a counterstrike. They had also had the devil's own luck at finding weak places to hit at.

The direct commander of the Latin Americans, a Cuban named Ernesto Bella, had been furious at losing so many men, but Bratchenko suspected him of secretly sympathizing with the "Wolverines." Bella spoke frequently of his own time as a guerrilla commander in the Caribbean and Latin America, and Bratchenko knew that in some ways, he saw himself as still the same insurgent leader he had once been. Bratchenko thought that Bella would have been happier if he'd been on the other side. If he hadn't been so good at his job, and so insightful into what might work against the partisans, Bella would probably have been retired. With extreme prejudice.

However, Colonel Bella was back in Calumet, and Bratchenko wished him joy of the accursed town. Bratchenko had to admit that a lot of the men and women he commanded in Pueblo made the rear-echelon reservists and half-trained draftees that he'd had in Calumet look like an elite Guards regiment. However, there'd been almost no trouble around Pueblo, and they'd even had a few locals join the American Liberation Army voluntarily. The ranks had been filled out, as in other places, with people taken from the Americans' prisons or forcibly conscripted. Such men needed stern discipline, and that was what General Bratchenko could give them.

He stood at the entrance to his headquarters and surveyed his men. They were lined up, at attention, and looked as good as any troops ever had. Bratchenko knew what it had taken to bring them to that point. The ex-prisoners were particularly recalcitrant, but most of those who'd been conscripted were also resistant to Soviet discipline. Some of both groups had been in the US forces before the Soviet invasion, and they, in particular, had much to un-learn.

The men saluted him in unison, holding their hands in the correct, Russian, way, and he saluted back. With that daily bit of ceremonial done, Bratchenko dismissed the soldiers, and they dispersed to their various duties. Bratchenko went back into his office, to face the pile of paperwork that somehow never got smaller. He smiled to himself, remembering the time he'd been helping interrogate a captured American officer. The American had been very hostile, but when he saw the paperwork all over Bratchenko's desk, he had nodded to it and said "You, too?" For a second, differences were forgotten as two professional soldiers nodded to each other.

 _If paperwork won wars, the Soviet Union would rule the world!_ thought Bratchenko, sitting down at his desk. At the top was a demand from higher up for Bratchenko to get busy and organize "donations" of livestock and food from the local ranchers and farmers. Bratchenko shook his head angrily. _Don't those fools realize that this is nearly desert country? Do they think they're in the Ukraine or somewhere like that?_ Nonetheless, it had to be done, so he began making a list of steps to take for at least some livestock and food to be gathered. He was quite sure that the locals were hiding as much as they could, but between threats, appeals to help the town-bound Americans who really needed food, and judicious bribes in the form of extra rations of fuel, he thought he could at least show his superiors that he was making a real effort. _And if that fails, there's always just sending in fake numbers!_ That had been the principle on which the Soviet Union had run since its foundation, and it had become routine.

* * *

Fred Jones, Shaggy Roberts and Scooby-Doo were seated in the passenger and back seats of Mr. Schmidt's big four-door pick-up truck. It was towing a large trailer full of unhappy bovines, whose mooing could be heard over the engine noise and sound of the tires. Behind them, another truck, this one with only the front seat in its cab, was towing another trailer of cattle. Daryl Bates was driving that one, with his brother Danny at his side.

Hidden in the trailers, the rest of the Wolverines were crouching, along with the recon team. They were all wearing civilian clothes, and were not armed. The plan was that they would claim to be relatives of the ranchers, drafted in to help with the work after the invasion. Fred hadn't been too sure about letting Daphne, Velma, Erica and Toni come along on this, but he'd been overruled.

"We're just as tough as any of you guys!" Toni had snarled, hands on her hips and glaring daggers at Fred. Beside her, Daphne nodded, giving Fred a look that boded ill for him when they had a chance for a private talk. "The Reds don't know who we are, so it's no more dangerous than for anybody else! And we might notice things you don't!"

"Yeah!" Velma had joined the Wolverine, scowling through her goggles. When the Army had discovered how nearsighted she was, she had nearly been discharged. Her technical and scientific skills had been deemed valuable enough for an exception to be made for her. At her suggestion, a pair of motorcycle goggles had been modified to carry the prescription lenses on which she depended. She did sacrifice a little peripheral vision, but she swore it didn't matter. And times were dangerous enough that her word was accepted. "I've got us out of a lot of jams, both before the war and now, with what I know! You _need_ me!"

"Death rate's the same for us as for you male-type people. One person, one death. No more, no less." Daphne had become grimly fatalistic since the invasion, particularly after finding that her parents had been directly in the path of the Reds. She still hoped they were alive, but she had privately told Fred that she had long since braced herself for the news that they were dead.

"Okay, okay! You're all in!" Fred hadn't been a sergeant long, but he'd been _de facto_ leader of Mystery, Inc. for some time before the invasion. He knew when to give in to his friends. And he had to admit the women had a point. They were all in danger, and if things went bad, they might need every friendly person they had. They depended on each other, and teamwork had saved them several times already.

They were coming up on one of the checkpoints around Pueblo. Mr. Schmidt slowed down. "Okay, keep cool. These guys are pretty slack. Just act like you've done this a thousand times before, and nothing's too likely to happen." When the truck came to a stop, two men came up to it. They were wearing a mishmash of Red and US uniforms, but the armbands on their arms with "ALA" marked them for what they were.

"Morning, gentlemen. Kind of a nice day if you've got to be out guarding a road," said Mr. Schmidt, cool as though he were speaking to neighbors of many years' standing instead of ill-disciplined collaborationist "soldiers." Fred looked them over unobtrusively, and wasn't too impressed. Even with their uniforms, he could see crude tattoos on their hands and necks, and they looked bleary-eyed, as though they had started early on a day's drinking.

"You got the cattle here for redistribution?" The leader put out a grubby hand. "Got anything for us poor soldiers?"

"You know I never forget you!" With a wink, Mr. Schmidt pulled a bottle full of a clear liquid out from under his seat. "This'll put hair on your chest!" As the soldier pocketed the bottle with a grin, Mr. Schmidt produced some papers. "This'll show you what we've brought. All in order."

The soldier glanced uninterestedly at the papers. "Yeah, these look all right," he grunted. He turned and waved at the other soldiers manning the checkpoint. "Let them through! They've brought cattle for redistribution!" The other soldiers cheered and raised the barrier, allowing Mr. Schmidt and Daryl to drive on into Pueblo.

Fred looked around curiously. Automatically, his eyes flicked around, checking for places where an ambush could be waiting, looking for spots that offered good cover to hide behind if a firefight broke out. He was glad they weren't armed, and wondered how the others were keeping Robert under control. _Probably by sitting on him,_ Fred thought mordantly. He had been reluctant to bring the women along, and from what the Wolverines had told him and he had seen himself, Robert was a bit of a loose cannon on his good days. Fred just hoped that nothing would set the volatile Wolverine off. He'd rather have left Robert behind, but knew that the other Wolverines wouldn't have stood for it.

Dropping off the cattle turned out to be fairly easy. With everybody helping, the cows and steers were off the trailers quickly, milling around in a corral along with many others. With that done, Fred looked at Jed. "What now?" he asked, keeping his voice low.

"Mr. Schmidt told me it'd take till tomorrow for us to get fuel to drive back to the ranch. In the meantime, we're ranch hands come to town. We can wander around and look the place over. You can find out what you need to know, and we can go back to the ranch tomorrow and figure out what to do when we've got more information."

That sounded good to Fred. He gathered his followers up with a look and a gesture, as Jed did likewise with the Wolverines. They stuck close together in a tight group as they walked on into the town proper. While rapes had become less frequent as the situation stabilized, they were still far from unknown. Scooby Doo was the only protection they had; they had not dared to carry weapons lest their pose of "harmless kids working as ranch hands" was questioned. Being caught carrying firearms, or anything much more threatening than a folding knife, would mean certain death.

Pueblo looked like it had been fought over. There were quite a few buildings standing in ruins, showing bullet and shell holes, or burned down and not rebuilt. The people they saw were acting fairly subdued, skittering along the streets as fast as they could go and trying to stay inconspicuous.

They paused near a building that had apparently once been a store, but was now serving a new purpose. Over the entrance was a hand-lettered sign: Rancher's Rest. Over the wood boarding up what had been a plate-glass window was a list of prices for drinks and food. Fred and Jed looked at each other, then at the others.

"Shall we go in?" Fred was well-supplied with the scrip the invaders used for money, and American dollars still circulated freely in the occupied zone. They pushed open the door and walked in.

The interior was dark; most of the electric lights were either not working or just not on. Most of the light came from outside, through the unbroken windows. A roughly-improvised bar stood at one end of the room, and there were other people, mostly men but some women, sitting at an assortment of tables. Some of the tables were improvised out of whatever had been at hand, while others had apparently been salvaged from various places. The air was thick with smoke.

"Come on, let's order something," Fred muttered. They moved over toward the bar in a group. Fred was aware that conversation had become muted when they had entered, and people were giving them suspicious glances. Behind the bar, an old man gave them a cold stare.

"What'll it be, strangers?"

Fred pulled out some occupation scrip. "Beers all around. Any objection?" he asked, looking at the others. Everybody nodded, and Fred put the scrip on the bar. The old man nodded, drawing them the drinks and serving them in an assortment of glasses. The infiltrators took their drinks, went over to an empty table, and sat down. Fred took a pull of his beer. It was watery, weak and badly brewed, but he hadn't expected Coors. He had known that the invasion had destroyed the Coors breweries.

After a little while, the other patrons began taking an interest in the newcomers. "Haven't seen you in here before. Where are you from?"

Fred looked at Jed, letting the Wolverines' leader do the talking. "We're from Colorado Springs, originally. After the fighting was over, we were moved south, and we've been working for the Schmidts since then. This is the first time we've been off their ranch since we got here."

That seemed to satisfy the others present, and tensions visibly eased. Colorado Springs had been the scene of some very intense fighting. The cadets and teachers at the Air Force Academy had defended their school fanatically, fighting on in the rubble long after anybody else would have surrendered. Fred had heard Red prisoners praising the cadets, saying that their epic last stand would have got them the Hero of the Soviet Union if they'd been on the other side. And since Colorado Springs now lay in ruins, the infiltrators' presence was explained in a way that couldn't be easily disproved.

Fred and the others relaxed, listening to the conversation. From what they heard, it wasn't too difficult getting in and out of most of Pueblo. There was an area in the south of the town, though, that was heavily guarded, mostly by ALA soldiers. "Keep out of the ALA's way, if you can," they were warned. "Those guys are trouble, nothing else but!"

A few minutes later, trouble walked on into the bar. A knot of about ten ALA soldiers strutted on in, not seeming to notice the silence that fell when they entered. Fred could feel the tension ratcheting up, and he unobtrusively signalled his friends that it was about time they left. Beside him, Jed was doing the same thing. Scooby Doo laid his ears back and bristled the fur on his back, and Fred quietly reached down and took the dog by the collar. They weren't there to start a fight.

The ALA men seemed to relish the reaction they'd caused. Strutting up to the bar like they owned the place, they demanded beers. In the thick sudden silence, they were served, slapping occupation scrip down on the bar as though paying for their beers was performing an act of undeserved charity. While Fred hadn't cared for the beer he had bought, he knew how hard it was getting by in the occupied zone, and thought that the ALA were acting in their usual charming way _. They sure know how to win friends and influence people,_ he thought.

Fred had feared that the ALA would focus on them, but there were a couple of vacant tables across the room, and that was where the turncoats headed. Once they were settled with their beers, they looked around, sneering at the ranch hands and townsfolk alike. They were outnumbered, but that didn't seem to bother them. They had the occupiers behind them, and they visibly enjoyed it.

After a couple of rounds of beer, the ALA began to get frisky. A couple of them stood up and went to a table where a couple of female ranch hands were sitting. The men who'd been with them were off in the men's room. "Hello, sweethearts! How's about coming over and keeping some lonely soldiers company? We're tired from all the hard work we do keeping the peace and making sure the fascists don't come back!"

The women reacted as though someone had dropped a live tarantula on the table. "Get lost, creeps!" one of them snarled.

"What do you mean by that?" hissed the ALA man who seemed to be in charge. He leaned over, shoving his face an inch away from the woman's face. "You giving us lip?"

"Leave them alone!" This was the men who had been with the women. They had come back from the toilet to find their companions being hovered over by the soldiers, and they clearly weren't pleased about that. "Why don't you try picking on someone your own size?"

"You getting hostile? Maybe you want a trip to the station?" The ALA men had been hit hard by the beer they had swilled. They leered at the ranch hands, cracking their knuckles suggestively.

Jed whispered: "Time for us to go, I think. There's a back door we can slip out through." Fred thought that was a wonderful idea, and as the locals got up from their seats, he and his companions did too, but headed unobtrusively toward the rear of the tavern.

The wisdom of Jed's decision to leave soon showed clearly. Not more than a minute after they'd slipped out through the back door, the sounds of a huge brawl could be heard clearly. From what Fred could tell, the ALA men were getting the worst of it. They'd been outnumbered, and were not popular enough for anybody not already in the ALA to want to take their part.

A siren sounded in the distance, and Scooby whined. "Ret's get rout of here!" Jed and the Wolverines stared at Scooby. They'd been told he could speak after a fashion, but this was the first time they'd really seen him do it.

"That's a real good idea. We'll just casually walk along this alley, take a turn away from the street we were on first when we come to a cross-street, and we should be out of most danger," Jed muttered. As calmly as though they were only out for a stroll, the infiltrators ambled along, not seeming to pay any attention to the hullaballoo going on behind them.

The rest of the day was taken up with prowling the streets of the town, making note of anything that would be useful to know. That evening, they found themselves bunking down in some old barns, breathing the smell of unforked dung and stale hay.

"Tomorrow, we'll be heading back out to the Schmidts'," Jed told them. Fred breathed a sigh of relief. This sort of thing was one of the hairiest thing he and his friends had to do, and he was always on edge when he was doing it. He was fully well aware that as a soldier wearing civilian clothes behind enemy lines, he could be shot or hanged perfectly legally by the Reds if he were captured or recognized. So far nobody had known them for what they were, but he knew that they weren't out of the woods yet.


	4. Chapter 4

Those Meddling Kids

Chapter Four

by Technomad

 _Jed_

The next morning, they rolled out of their nests, sneezing at the dust and other things that the hay had contained. Nobody complained, though. They had all slept in much worse conditions, and having a roof over their heads and someplace fairly soft to lie up was not to be despised.

They had a few cans of food, which they made do for breakfast, and put themselves as much to rights as they could. Jed knew they looked scruffy, ragged and dirty, but so did many other people in the occupied zone. New clothes were difficult to come by, and even cloth for repairing old clothes was scarce.

The girls nipped off to a secluded spot to relieve themselves, as the men tactfully pretended nothing was happening. Living in each others' pockets as they did, they had no secrets from each other, and modesty had been one of the casualties of the war. Even so, they did prefer some privacy for these things.

Once everybody was ready to go, Jed said: "I'll check and see if Mr. Schmidt is ready to head back to the ranch. If he is, we'll have to pack up and go, but I told him we'd probably need a full day to check this place out." Jed winked. "Mr. Schmidt knows how to spin things out, and the Reds' paperwork is a big help sometimes when he needs to do that!"

Everybody nodded. Scooby-Doo's ears lifted up, and he barked: "Right!" Jed and the rest of the Wolverines stared at him. They'd been told of Scooby's intelligence and capabilities, but most of them had not seen him in action.

Matt muttered: "We could have used a dog like that, back before the war."

Fred and the rest of the recon team smiled. "Maybe after the war you can get one. Right now, he's part of our group, and a vital member of the team." Scooby gave Fred a doggy grin and trotted over to stand at Shaggy's side, as they exited the barn to see what was going on.

Sure enough, there would be delays before they left town. When they found him, Mr. Schmidt was deep in a discussion with several harassed-looking officials about the number and quality of animals he had delivered. Pulling himself away with a visible effort, he said: "We're not going to leave until at least this evening. Go find something to do." Jed winked at his old friend before gathering his companions and heading off to do just exactly that.

"We were told that an area in the south side of the town was being guarded pretty heavily," Velma muttered, once they were out of earshot of others. "Maybe an innocent walk in that direction would be in order?"

"Yeah," Daphne agreed. "I've got a miniature camera here. It's hidden under my shirt. I can hopefully get some pictures that'll tell our HQ what's going on here, and whether we should do anything about it."

"Good God!" Erica exclaimed, in a low voice. "I hope you've got it hidden well! If the Reds find that on you, they'll have you strung up for a spy before you know it!"

Daphne gave Erica a bitter smile. "As long as I can harm them, what the hell do I care?" Jed noted that Robert's eyes grew very wide at this statement, and he was looking at Daphne like he'd never seen her before…and liked what he saw.

Unobtrusively, Jed rolled his eyes _. Now I've got two of them on my hands!_ he thought. He had enough trouble keeping Robert in line, and hoped devoutly that Daphne, no matter how bitter she might have become toward the invaders, was less volatile.

Fred

As they went farther west, they saw more and more soldiers. The ALA was much in evidence, but Fred could identify Cuban, Latin American, and Warsaw Pact soldiers as well. He'd seldom seen European Red soldiers other than Soviets themselves. At first, they were often difficult to distinguish from their allies, but he had had a familiarization course, and knew what to look for. The patches on the uniforms of the Europeans he passed told him that there were Poles present, and he was startled to run across a few undeniable East Germans, in their oddly Third Reich-styled uniforms.

"Something very fishy is going on here, Shag," Fred muttered. Shaggy nodded, his eyes flickering around, taking in their surroundings. Scooby was also on alert, his ears pricked up. At least his hackles were down; Fred didn't like thinking of what might happen if some trigger-happy soldier took it into his head that the dog was hostile. If a soldier or collaborator shot Scooby, they would have no recourse save an appeal to the soldiers' commanders, and he much preferred not coming to their notice if at all possible.

At the end of one block, they saw a barbed-wire gate across the street, guarded by what looked like actual Soviet soldiers. The infiltrators stopped, keeping their hands in sight and their faces carefully blank, as one of the Soviets came up to them, his AK over his shoulder.

"Is not permitted for Americans to be in this area, comrades," the Soviet said. His broad Slavic face was marred with an ugly scar across the middle, and he limped slightly. Fred figured that was why he would be stuck behind the lines in a place like Pueblo. He looked at the other Soviets in the vicinity, and he noticed that all of them also had visible injuries, or limped noticeably. One had a patch over one eye.

"Oh, sorry. I used to live in this part of town, back when I was little, and I wanted to see how it had come through the fighting. Didn't mean to break any rules, comrade. This is my first time back in town since the Liberation." While using the invaders' terminology stuck in Fred's throat, he could do it at need. He'd spent hours, as they all had, listening to the Reds' radio broadcasts, and he could sound like a good little Quisling when he had to.

"Is no problem. Still, you leave now." Having been sent to the rightabout, Fred and his companions turned to go. While their route seemed to be random, they were carefully figuring out just which areas of Pueblo were now no-go areas.

When they had some privacy, they pulled out a tattered prewar map of Pueblo that Fred had been given before they set out. As carefully as they could, they marked the streets that were blocked off, at the points where further passage was forbidden.

"It looks like the airport's off-limits," Jed commented. "And the areas near it."

"Makes sense," Daryl said. "That area would be perfect for them to store those missiles, if they're even still here."

"I wonder if they've got any military aircraft around here?" mused Erica. "Even if they've moved whatever missiles were still here, smashing those things up would hurt the bastards. For _some_ reason…" her smile was pure evil… "they've been having trouble getting resupply and replacements from the Workers' Paradise."

"Like, don't assume that they would only use Warsaw Pact gear or equipment," Shaggy pointed out. "A lot of those ALA bastards use US-made M-16s of various marks, and we've seen them using US-built tanks, trucks and APCs before."

"But hitting the airport, whether or not the missiles are there, would harm their efforts," Matt said. "There's only so many aircraft they can have on this continent."

"And I bet there's fuel tanks there. We can maybe set those on fire!" Robert's eyes gleamed. "Bright, hot, crackly fire…cleansing the earth of their contamination." His smile was like a devil's leer.

Fred looked worriedly at Robert. He hoped that Jed, or the rest of the Wolverines, could keep their friend in check. While a berserker was a useful man to have around in a fight, they were very difficult to control at other times. He was just glad that they hadn't stayed longer at the Rancher's Rest. Berserkers and alcohol were a dangerous combination.

And, Fred noticed with some amusement, Daphne was looking at Robert with a predatory gleam in her eye. Daphne, much to his surprise, had turned out to be one of the most lethal of the old Mystery, Inc. group. Between her outrage at the fact of the invasion, and her fears for her family, she had taken to waging war with an avidity that startled and sometimes frightened him.

 _At least Velma can usually keep her in line!_ thought Fred. The two women teamed up, as a rule. Velma's cool thinking and knowledge, as well as her own skill with weapons, combined with Daphne's ferocity and enthusiasm to make a truly dangerous team. Fred wondered what would happen if they stayed with the Wolverines, and Daphne and Robert became "an item." He hoped that neither of the two female Wolverines was particularly interested in Robert. That sort of situation was guaranteed to end in serious trouble. And as heavily-armed as they were, the trouble could turn lethal.

Jed folded up the map. "Let's go back to the Rancher's Rest," he said. "I don't know about you all, but I'm hungry. We're well-found for money…at least, if you count this Monopoly money the invaders use…and I haven't eaten all day." That met with general approval, and they headed back out onto the street, headed for the Rancher's Rest.

When they got there, the lunch crowd was just thinning out. They got a table together, which looked to Fred like it had once belonged to a school lunchroom, and a harried-looking waitress scuttled over to offer them a badly-printed menu. Even though they had plenty of money, Fred's eyes went wide at the prices. _Guess the war's got their supply system as badly screwed-up as ours is!_ he thought. He was grateful to be in the Army. At least in the Army, he could count on getting fed, being able to replace his clothes at need, and some sort of medical attention if he got sick or hurt. Too many people in the occupied zone had no such guarantees.

The menu's offerings were also not as varied as they would have been before the war. At least beef was in fairly plentiful supply, but side dishes were limited. Fried potatoes dominated the menu, with green vegetables marked as "if and when we have them." Pork, fish, and other meats were conspicuous by their absence. Fred nodded. The Reds were not close to the sea, and could not count on re-supply from their homelands. While they levied on the people in the areas they controlled, there were limits on what they could seize. If they took too much, the locals would either starve, or rise in frenzied rebellion. Neither of those outcomes was desirable from the Communists' point of view. The Reds honestly believed that they were doing the Americans a good turn by occupying their country, and having large-scale rebellions on their hands would not only damage that self-image, but would severely impact their campaign to "liberate" North America.

They all ended up settling for beef stew with fried potatoes on the side. To drink, there was the same watery beer they'd had the day before. Although Fred was not fond of drinking much before sunset, he ordered a glass of beer, as did the others. Inwardly, he reflected that one of the very few good things about the invasion was that some laws had gone by the boards, including the ones about underage drinking.

When the stew came, it was tasteless, and the beef in it was tough enough, despite hours of boiling, to make chewing it a real exercise for the jaws. But the Wolverines and Fred's group were all veterans, and knew better than to turn up their noses at anything edible. The potatoes, on the other hand, were surprisingly good. Fried in melted beef fat, they did a lot to make up for the stew.

The restaurant-cum-saloon was not too busy, and nobody bothered the infiltrators. There were a few other customers lingering over their food, so nobody spoke of things more consequential than the weather or the prospects for ranching and farming. In occupied territory, there was always the chance of an informer overhearing incriminating conversation and reporting it to the Communists.

Some informers were Soviets who'd been trained for years to pass as American. Those men and women were often incredibly insidious. They had impeccably idiomatic American accents, and could fool nearly anybody. They also had great skill at espionage and sabotage, and often caused huge SNAFUs if they were able to insinuate themselves into places where they had access to American communications. And since the Soviet Union consisted of nearly fifty nationalities, almost anybody could be a Soviet infiltrator.

Native-born pro-Soviet American infiltrators were a mixed lot. There were those who were true believers in the Soviets' cause. Many of them were educated types. Before the invasion, one of the very few places one could find out-and-out Soviet sympathizers in America was the academic subculture. Fred thought it had something to do with tenure, but he wasn't clear on the details. Luckily, most of those were not specialists in things that could seriously damage the American war effort, and had to confine themselves to menial jobs while in American-held territory, gathering such information as they could to be slipped across the lines to their Soviet friends.

Others were out-and-out criminals, sociopaths and crazies. While the Soviets utilized them, they were very unreliable and prone to getting caught. When caught, they would often blurt out everything they knew about whatever networks they had had contact with, in a vain hope of escaping execution. But they would not shrink from doing anything that would harm the American cause. Some were embittered by prison, others were just out to hurt whomever they could.

Just then, Fred's thoughts were interrupted by an ominous crackle from loudspeakers. "Attention! Attention! General Bratchenko has announcements to make! All citizens will assemble at the park! Attention! Attention!"

Fred looked at his companions. Shaggy, Daphne and Velma looked fairly unconcerned, but the Wolverines all looked very worried. Leaning close to Jed, Fred asked: "What's wrong? You look like you just saw a ghost!"

"Fred, that General has the same name as one of the two top officers in charge of the Red troops in Calumet! I don't know if he ever saw us, but he damned well knows our name!" As they spoke, people were getting to their feet and filing out to the street, and Fred knew they couldn't stall for long.

Fred thought fast. "Did he ever see you up close? Close enough to know you if he saw your faces?" Jed shook his head. "Then just stick close by us, stay back in the crowd, and don't, for God's sake, act nervous or guilty!" Fred grinned as he got up. "Remember? We're just a bunch of poor innocent kids, refugees from Colorado Springs, who're working at the Schmidts' ranch! Stay cool!"

The Wolverines and the Mystery Inc. team filed out onto the street, following the crowds to the park where General Bratchenko would be speaking. It was quite crowded; although much of Pueblo's population was gone for some reason or another, there were many people who couldn't or wouldn't leave, and had had to get used to life under Soviet occupation. They were all looking very scruffy, which meant that the infiltrators would not stand out particularly.

At the center of the park, Fred could see a platform, with red flags flying above it and Soviet troops surrounding it. He was rather surprised that the Soviet general would expose himself so openly. Apparently there had been no partisan activity near Pueblo recently.

Robert muttered, very quietly: "If this were Calumet, he'd never dare do this!" Erica grabbed him from behind and slapped her hand across his mouth. When some people stared, she gave them a bland smile.

"Sorry-he has these spells sometimes. My little brother's all right, mostly, but ever since he hit his head, he does weird stuff sometimes. Nothing to worry about." That satisfied the onlookers' curiosity. There had been quite a few injuries during the invasion, and many families had one or more members who were "not quite right," in one way or another.

A premonitory crackle from the loudspeakers told them that things were about to start happening. Fred strained to see this Soviet general. He had infiltrated deep into enemy territory before, but had never before come across such a high-ranking personage. He wanted to take note of everything he could.

General Bratchenko did not look very impressive at first glance, but Fred knew that looks could be deceptive. The Soviet general had a sallow, lean, hollow-cheeked face, with a carefully-shaved short beard and moustache. He wore a fur cap like many Soviet soldiers did, and his uniform was bare of medals. Around him, Fred could see Soviet soldiers, alert for trouble. He saw that the soldiers were wearing striped jerseys under their uniforms, and knew that marked them as _Spetsnaz_. A cold chill went down his back. The Soviets treasured and husbanded their elite _Spetsnaz_ soldiers, and did not deploy them as casually as they did ordinary soldiers, much less their ALA quisling troops. The presence of Spetsnaz told him all he needed to know about the importance of Pueblo to the other side.

Speaking through an interpreter, General Bratchenko began his speech. It was a mishmash of the usual Soviet boilerplate: the Soviets had come as liberators, not as conquerors, the American regime was fascist, racist, capitalist and unfair, and things would be much better once everything was running in proper Soviet style. Quotations from Lenin, and the current Soviet leadership, were scattered through the speech like raisins in cookie dough. Fred privately thought that any Soviet bigwig who was forbidden to quote Lenin would find himself all but deprived of the power of speech.

On and on the speech went, and Fred found himself bitterly regretting the beer he had drunk earlier. He wasn't the only one; there were quite a few people in the crowd who were exhibiting signs of real restlessness. Apparently General Bratchenko noticed it too. He wound up his speech with a " _Urra_!" for the Soviet Union and the glorious Red Army, and the American Liberation Army, and the crowd was free to wander away. Quite a few of them wandered in the direction of someplace they could piss, and Fred was not behindhand at that. Once he'd relieved himself, he looked around for his companions. To his relief, they were not far away, and nobody had twigged to who they were. There were quite a few strange faces in town, apparently.

Jed had found Mr. Schmidt; he'd been in the crowd too. At Jed's beckoning wave, Fred and the others came over to see what was up. Once they were all together, Mr. Schmidt said: "I was able to get the fuel we need, so it's time we loaded up and headed out on back to the ranch. I've got the passes we need to get out of town." Fred had never heard words that gratified him more. While he was used to infiltration and deep penetration of enemy territory, he was usually in uniform, and at least theoretically entitled to be treated as a prisoner of war, instead of being summarily shot or hanged as a spy.


	5. Chapter 5

Those Medding Kids

Chapter 5

by Technomad

Jed

Jed didn't really breathe easy until they had passed the ALA checkpoint and were heading out of town, back to the Schmidts' ranch. He much preferred staying in the mountains and striking at the enemy to sneaking in behind enemy lines. At least "regular" guerrilla war was fairly straightforward.

Fred was crammed into the front seat of the truck along with Jed and Mr. Schmidt. The rest of the infiltration team and the Wolverines were in the back. While the accomodations were not exactly luxurious, nobody was complaining. They were all too glad to see Pueblo disappearing in the distance.

When they got to the Schmidts' ranch, everybody piled out, and stretched. They were all dirty, and Mrs. Schmidt looked them up and down, her hands on her hips. "Okay. All of you need showers. You girls go first, then the boys." Jed knew better than to argue with his godmother when she used that tone, so he just nodded. He was glad to see that the infiltrators did not look like they wanted to argue. He looked forward to getting himself clean. That was an opportunity that came too seldom, when they were up in the mountains.

The Schmidts still had hot water, thanks to a methane converter they had built from plans in a magazine before the invasion. When Jed finally got his turn, last of all, he luxuriated in the feeling, and closed his eyes, letting his mind transport him for a few minutes to the safe world before the war.

When they had all showered, the Wolverines and infiltrators gathered in the living room, wearing spare pajamas and nightgowns that the Schmidts had had around. Mrs. Schmidt was in the kitchen busily cooking, and Mr. Schmidt was sitting with them. Fred brought out a case of documents that he'd had on him.

"Okay, here's some pictures of Pueblo from space, from before the invasion. And here's a few taken after it fell to the Reds, by one of our surviving satellites." Jed leaned forward, curious to see how the town had changed. He could see changes; quite a few buildings that had been there before the war were apparently gone, and the airport area was fenced off.

Mrs. Schmidt came in, with a big plate of food. "Here. It's not as good as I could have done before the war, but those dreadful Communists have disrupted everything," she said, putting the plate down. Jed's mouth watered, but he restrained himself, only taking a share after everybody else had one. Looking up, he caught Mr. Schmidt's eye. His godfather winked and nodded his approval, and Jed felt good. Eating felt even better. One thing that he and his friends, and, apparently, the infiltrators, had learned since the invasion was to eat whenever they got the chance, since they never knew when the next food was going to appear.

Sitting back and enjoying the unaccustomed feeling of a full stomach, Jed thought: _After the war, I'll never, never take food for granted again as long as I live!_

Fred

Fred was looking the photographs over, figuring out what the best move would be. He could see several different routes by which the airport area could be approached. "I take it that these roads are under guard, too?" he asked Mr. Schmidt, tapping one of the photos.

Mr. Schmidt looked at the photograph. "Most likely. The Reds have plenty of people for that, particularly since those ALA appeared." A shadow seemed to cross his face. "I still can't believe that anybody would join the Reds! I thought better of people!"

"Some of them were forced in at gunpoint, sir," Velma said, peering at the pictures through her thick goggles. "Others were taken right out of prisons, and many of those are r'aring for revenge on 'straight' society."

"They do have, like, real volunteers," Shaggy said. "Some of 'em are true believers, while others just join for what they can get."

"Their names are on lists," Robert said, looking up from his food with a dangerous gleam in his eye. "After the war, there'll be a great settling of accounts." He took a bite, chewed and swallowed, closing his eyes in bliss at the feeling of eating. "And I hope I survive the war so I can get in on it."

Fred looked at Jed for a second. Jed shook his head very slightly. Then Fred looked at Daphne. Daphne was looking at Robert, and Fred didn't like the look in her eyes at all. He glanced at Velma and Shaggy, and they both looked as worried as he felt.

"Keep in mind, you've got to live to the end of the war to get in on that," Mr. Schmidt said. "Throwing your life away in some ill-considered mad attack would do no good, and maybe do harm. Let the big head do the thinking."

Robert visibly considered that idea, then finally nodded. To Fred, the nod looked reluctant, and he renewed his vow to himself to keep a careful eye on that particular Wolverine. He had enough trouble keeping Daphne from berserking when they got into fights. _At least,_ he thought _, Velma's pretty clear-headed and cool!_

Jed

When they were done eating, Jed said: "We now at least know where the areas we want to hit at are. Let's start brainstorming ways and means to do it." He grinned bitterly. "Preferably ways that don't end up with any of us getting killed!" Jed was always coldly aware that, unlike the other side, he had no lives he could waste. Every one of his followers was a personal friend, and he bled inside at the thought of any of them dying, particularly if it happened due to some mistake of his.

They got out the maps and aerial photographs, bending together over them. Velma, from the infiltration team, brought out a magnifying glass. Glancing up, she saw him looking at her oddly, and gave him a gamine grin.

"I have to carry this all the time, Jed," she explained. "My eyes…my spirit's more than willing, but my eyes just aren't up to much."

Scooby Doo nuzzled her. "Right!"

She cuddled the big dog. "Scooby here does a wonderful job protecting me, and so do the others, just like before the war when we went around exposing fake hauntings and things like that." She shrugged. "If we weren't such a tight-knit team, and my special skills with technology and the like weren't so very valuable, I'd probably be filing documents or holding down a desk somewhere behind the US lines."

"Wouldn't you rather do that, Miss…er, I mean, _Private_ Dinkley?" Mrs. Schmidt was all motherly concern. "I can't get used to this modern way of letting women into combat."

Erica Mason spoke up. "Women have always _been_ in combat, ma'am. It's just that now, we get to shoot back!" Her sister Toni nodded agreement, her eyes unfocussed as she stared at something only she could see for a second. Jed remembered how they had come to join the Wolverines, and figured he knew what the sisters were thinking about. He held his peace. Even after so long together, there were things they didn't discuss unless there was no other choice. They all had their private demons, but he knew the girls' particular nightmares were worse than his, or any of the other guys'.

Shaggy pointed at a narrow path that was marked on one of the maps. "Like, is this path still there, man?" Jed looked at it. It wound around through the hills, coming out near the fence that surrounded the airport.

"I don't know. We might have to go look at it. But just charging out of the woods at the fence would get us killed in a hurry, I think."

"We need a distraction, people," said Daryl. "If the Commies are occupied with something else, or at least paying most of their attention to it, we can get close enough to crash through the fence."

"Yes, a distraction," Jed mused. "But what would work, I wonder?"

"Maybe…maybe if they thought we were friendly, we could walk right up to the fence?" put in Aardvark.

Everybody looked at him. He spread his hands. "Hey, we were talking about those scum in the ALA earlier. If we could get some of their uniforms, we could probably get in without too much trouble. I noticed that they didn't seem like the sharpest knives in the drawer." He looked around. "It was just an idea…"

"That's a brilliant idea!" Toni Mason came over and kissed Aardvark, making him blush. "Now, all we need to do is to get our hands on those uniforms."

Jed saw an evil gleam in Robert's and Daphne's eyes. "Preferably not too bloody or torn up. Right?" Robert and Daphne looked at him, and he returned their stares, unafraid. After a second or two of their wills clashing, the other two dropped their gaze. Inwardly, Jed gave a sigh of relief. _Keeping one hate-driven would-be berserker under control was enough trouble. Now I've got two!_ he thought.

Fred

A few days later, Fred was lying up in the brush, overlooking a road through the hills, miles from Pueblo. Not far away, the others were also hidden. They were waiting for their prey to arrive.

Mr. Schmidt had been very informative about the habits of the ALA. The collaborationists tended to stick strictly to routines, and used the same routes to get around, at about the same time every week. Fred wondered if that was because they just liked routine, because they were too badly trained to think of varying their schedules, or because their masters didn't trust them enough to let them do much on their own.

Scooby-Doo stared off to the north. He growled softly, and his hackles rose. "Rhey're rumming!" he said. Long since used to Scooby's way of speech, Fred nodded and signalled the others that their targets were coming. He heard several soft clicks as safties were taken off guns.

Down the road came a car, and Fred smiled. His smile felt wonderfully carnivorous. This deep into the hills, only one possibility existed as to who was in that car. Like every other patriotic American, he hated the ALA with a pure, cold hatred.

The car came into view, and Fred narrowed his eyes. Everything now depended on timing. At least, he thought, it's not an off-road model! An off-road vehicle might have been able to get out of the trap he'd set up.

Fred soon saw that he needn't have worried. In front of the ALA car, a tree fell into the road, blocking it completely. Before the ALA men could even stop, another tree fell into the road behind them. Toni and Erica had done their parts perfectly.

Before the ALA men had been due, the Wolverines and Fred's group had cut two trees that leaned out over the road, making sure to hold them up and in place with unobtrusive ropes attached to other trees. Toni and Erica had been watching the road with the others, with knives poised to cut the ropes as soon as the ALA car was in position.

Once the car was immobilized, the next part of the plan started. Jed Eckert yelled: "Throw down your weapons! You're surrounded! You don't have a chance! Surrender, and I'll let you live!"

Within the car, a furious argument started. One voice yelled: "We've got to get out of here! Blast them!"

Another voice: "They've got us dead-to-rights! If we surrender we might just have a chance!" A shot rang out, and then the second voice said: "Okay, we surrender! We're giving up!" The car's windows opened, and several rifles and pistols were thrown out. "We're opening the doors. We surrender! Don't shoot!"

Jed gestured, and Matt, Shaggy and Danny went forward, covering the ALA car and keeping as much behind rocks as they could. The doors opened, and four uniformed ALA stumbled out, their hands in the air. "Okay, turn and face the car, hands on the roof. Assume the position!" snapped Matt, as Shaggy and Danny came up to them. The rest of the infiltration team and Wolverines stayed under cover, watching from behind rocks and fallen trees, their weapons ready.

Matt searched the prisoners, confiscating their identity papers and other documents he found. He paused for a moment when he pulled a hip flask out of one prisoner's pocket. Opening it, he sniffed. "Vodka?" Then he shrugged and pocketed it. Jed wasn't a bit surprised that ALA men would drink on duty.

Inside the car, the ALA driver slumped over the steering wheel, a dribble of blood coming out of one ear. Matt opened the driver's door, pulling the body out onto the road. One of the ALA prisoners said "He was always really enthusiastic about what we were doing. We just joined because they made us!" The others chorussed agreement.

Up in his hiding place, Jed shook his head skeptically. He and the Wolverines had had little to do with the ALA, but from what he had heard, those forced into the ranks were not trusted enough to be let as far off the leash as this group were. The unwilling conscripts were kept on-base, and did a lot of the scut-work for the ones who'd joined of their own free will.

"Come this way," said Danny, gesturing with his rifle. With their hands laced on top of their heads, the ALA prisoners were herded off to one side of the road, where they were greeted by the rest of the ambush team. They looked surprised and terrified to see so many hostile Americans.

"Hello," said Jed, smiling what felt like a very unpleasant smile. "We want to talk to you about your workplace. Tell us all about the ALA."

"Yeah," snarled Daphne. "Don't hold back. Tell us everything you know!"

"If you talk, I won't hurt you," Jed went on. "If you don't talk…well, a lot of bad things happen in a war, don't they?" _Particularly to traitors_ , he thought. He'd talked with Fred and the infiltration team about the ALA before setting this idea in motion, and nothing he had heard predisposed him to sympathy with the prisoners.

The ALA had what amounted to carte-blanche vis-à-vis the population in the occupied zones, and many of them used their privileges to the hilt. Crimes by ALA members against ordinary Americans were investigated lackadasially, if at all, and even murder and rape were often winked at by local Soviet commanders.

Fred had said that even many Soviet soldiers despised the ALA. "We use them, but don't ever think we love them!" one prisoner had said while being interrogated. Apparently many Russians called them "the expendables," and in the event of a large American counterattack, planned to force the ALA to soak up as many bullets as possible, so as to ensure that the Soviets themselves survived to fight longer. While Jed hated the Soviets, he acknowledged that they were fighting for their country, and he understood their dislike for the ALA completely. If things had been reversed, and the Americans had been deep in Soviet territory, he'd have used Soviet traitors, but never trusted or liked them.

The ALA prisoners knew that they were in a bad fix. Smiling like dogs trying to ingratiate themselves with a new alpha, they talked. "We're based near Pueblo, sir. We were sent on a patrol because someone reported suspicious activity out here. Things have been quiet for a while, and our bosses want to keep it that way."

Jed nodded, rubbing his chin. He knew exactly who had made that call, since he'd done it himself. They'd wanted to lure some ALA men out, away from the garrisons where most of them were to be found. That was an essential part of their plan.

"Well, tell me about your commanders. And the other people you're with. Tell me everything. And don't lie. You don't know what I already do know, and if I find you're lying…" Jed made a "cut-throat" gesture. "If you cooperate, I won't hurt you."

"And we'll let you go," said Daphne. Jed looked at her narrowly. To the eye, she was quite attractive, but there was a gleam in her eye that he didn't care for much. He wouldn't have trusted her, but he figured anybody fool enough or low-down enough to join the ALA would fall for her act.

He had no intention of letting the prisoners go free. Even though they were deep in the hills, there was a chance that the prisoners could walk out back to friendly lines, or even find help. Much as Jed hated to admit it, there were Americans who'd help them for various reasons.

Reassured, the prisoners began talking at length. Jed pulled out a note pad and pencil, making rapid notes. He'd learned shorthand before the war, and blessed the day he'd decided to take that class, even though he'd only done it to try to get close to an attractive classmate.

After a while, the prisoners ran down. "That's all we know, sir. What do you want now?" one of them asked.

"Your uniforms. Come on, strip! You can keep your underwear, but we want your uniforms." Looking puzzled, but relieved, the prisoners started to take off their outer clothes. "Your boots, too." At this, the prisoners looked mutinous for a second, until Jed gestured significantly with his rifle and they remembered just where they were.

"Stand up." Obediently, the prisoners stood. "Daphne, Robert, take them off to where we'll be keeping them." The prisoners shambled off with their hands in the air, and Daphne and Robert covering them. After a few minutes, shots rang out, and Daphne and Robert came back, holstering smoking pistols.

Jed put on an innocent look. "The ALA sure has a real problem with desertion, doesn't it? Their guys disappear all the time. It's like they can't be trusted or something." Then he looked at the uniforms they'd confiscated. "I think these will do. We'll see who they'll fit when we get out of here. In the meantime, someone start that car of theirs and drive it to where we can push it into a ravine or something." They bundled up the uniforms as Aardvark got into the car and started it, waiting for them to move the trees out of the road so he could drive along. There was a good deep ravine less than a mile away, and even if the enemy went looking, the chances of the car being overlooked were pretty good.

 _(Author's note: Jed and the others are on sketchy ground here, but this is not a situation where they can take and keep prisoners. They're a long way behind enemy lines, and far from anybody who could take charge of POWs. They also all hate the ALA, for very good reasons.)_


End file.
